Bring back the trolley buses

Sometimes, one has to look to the past in order to find the answers to today’s problems. Enter the trolley bus, a public transport solution from over 100 years ago that could clean up our inner cities.

The first overhead powered car was designed in Germany before during the 1880s and proved so successful that its basic design was adopted to make a bus familiar to us from photographs from the 1950s.

So abundant are the advantages of these vehicles, it is hard to see why they so many systems were done away with. To be charitable, it may have been because during the 1950-60s, it was deemed desirable to standardise on just one form of power. In addition, it saved the cost of maintaining pylons. These days, however, such costs must seem very small compared with fuel prices and the benefits of electric transport in cities.

Luckily there are a few systems in the UK that use electric power; Blackpool and recently Nottingham use trams/trolley buses.

Our European, and even American, brethren could teach Britain a thing or to do about using trolley buses for transport. Let’s hope to see more of them on our travels. Transport that does not pollute at the point of delivery has to be the way forward. In addition electric transport may well be cheaper owing to reduced fuel costs. The technology is already in place it is known that it works. Just imagine if the same cities used solar and other renewable technologies for their power as well!

Above is a contemporary Polish trolley bus, showing that the technology is very much alive and well.